


Appropriate Danger

by flinchflower



Series: Slash Me Twice [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flinchflower/pseuds/flinchflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt 8: Danger. Dean lets his addiction get away from him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appropriate Danger

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not for profit, simply a writing exercise. Herein lies Dean/Sam slash, in an AU timeline where John did not lose his life. John appears in parental context only.

Dean Winchester, danger junkie. Nothing new really, but Sam’s invested now, in the hunter’s life, in his family, ,and Dean’s craving for _dangers untold_ doesn’t sit well with his younger brother. Sam has whirled a full one hundred and eighty degrees from his teen years, from secretly thinking that Dean’s daring was cool. Especially since it often provided Sam the opportunity to watch or listen to his big brother getting spanked. Now that they’re hunting with John again, it seems that some things, indeed, never change.

Sam’s listened, to those stern lectures that John metes out when one of the boys is bare-assed over his knee. John was watching over them while they were hunting for him after Sam... left Stanford, he’s mentioned too many details that neither boy has confessed to him, though it could be that Pastor Jim or perhaps Bobby or Caleb have outed some of those shenanigans to John. Sam has come to suspect that Dean behaved better, while Sam was away at college.

Sam himself learned a little something, at college. Learned that not everyone could be saved from everything they encountered. Discovered that though the situations his family typically jumped into warranted risking everything to save a life, it’s not always that way. Hours full of law case reviews taught him that, and if anything, he harbors a little scorn for people who try to be dashing when they should have been paying attention instead of glory hunting. And he suspects that John Winchester knows it too, that he always has.

Sam’s glad John sides with him about Dean’s escapades. First, because he’d do anything to keep his brother safe, knows that’s John’s number one priority as well. Second, John still spanks him, twenty-eight years notwithstanding, and that’s just kind of satisfying, not to mention hot. Occasionally though, he watches the spanking with arms crossed, eyes narrowed. He’ll refuse to go to Dean afterwards, remembering his own teen years, receiving the same sort of punishment, and Dean’s pointed silences when he thought Sam was deserving of the spanking. Dean’s absence always served to drive the lesson home hard for Sam, because it didn’t happen very often.

Sam’s memories are only too clear, of the hunt where Dean hadn’t properly assessed the environment before using the tazer, nearly died of the electrocution. Damned if the idiot didn’t make the same mistake a second time, this time in a warehouse. Difference was, this time John was there, hot on the boy’s tail, and yanked Dean bodily up off the floor and onto the ladder Dean had jumped off of. Dean had sworn at his father, angry at missing a sure shot, and John, holding onto all hundred and eighty pounds of his son via the boy’s jacket collar, shook him with a displeased snarl. He gripped his temper and then managed to grab the back of Sam’s belt with his other hand to steady the younger boy as Sam – safely – took the shot.

Then Sam had very calmly tossed the salt and a match onto the spirit lying in the pool of water and gasoline on the floor, tucked the tazer into John’s backpack, and bodily hauled Dean up the ladder, feeling John follow behind him. The three odd inches and twenty pounds he had on his brother stood him in good stead as he hauled Dean to the Impala, the older boy never got his scrambling feet quite underneath him before Sam threw him in the backseat. John started the car just as Sam folded himself into the passenger’s side, took off before Sam even had the seatbelt fastened. They are a hundred miles away from town when John takes a breath to start the lecture, but Sam is a second faster.

“What the fuck were you THINKING? Did all of your brains run out your ears the LAST time you pulled shit like that? Or do you not remember lying in a hospital DYING because of the jolt your heart took?”

Dean mumbles something unintelligible, and Sam plows onwards. “I swear to God, Dean, you need to be more careful-“ His anger comes to an abrupt halt, eyes filling with tears the same way they always do when he thinks of how close Dean had come to dying.

“Can we just drop it?” comes the snarl from the backseat, and John Winchester’s miles of careful, repeated counts to one hundred – actually, this time he’d hit a full thousand – fall to dust by the side of the road. One of those ‘runaway truck’ asides shows itself just in time, and he yanks the Impala onto the side road in a cloud of dust and sand. He recovers himself once he’s reached into the back and pulled Dean out, big hand fisted in the young man’s shirt. A glance up at the car shows him that his youngest son is still in his seat, head bowed and shoulders shaking.

Dean at least has the good sense to look frightened, as he all but dangles in John’s grasp. John tries to feel out the situation, think it through, fights his temper back into its holster. Carefully, he calculates, using his exacting intelligence to find his way through this new jungle. Simply turning Dean over his knee, or bending him over the Impala’s hood and taking his belt to him isn’t going to cut it this time. And he’s worried about his baby boy, there in the car, because if John’s right, the boy is crying – something Sam never does in front of his father, or even Dean if he can help it.

He pulls Dean in close. “You. Are going to get in the backseat, and I’m gonna hand you a map. Then you’re gonna find the nearest motel on that map. You aren’t gonna say a word, aside from pointing it out to me when I get back in the car. Understood?”

“Yessir.” Dean sounds subdued, like maybe he’s thinking. Good. John puts Dean in the car, tosses the box of maps at him, and then opens the passenger door. He wraps a warm, easy hand around Sam’s arm, pulls his baby out of the car, heart aching when Sam won’t look at him. Rather than say anything, he just puts a solid hand on the boy’s shoulder, and leads him off into the woods away until he finds a downed tree where they can sit. Sam’s face is stony, though there are still tears falling. When they sit down, Sam strips off his belt, hands it to his father.

“What? Sam- Sammy, no,” he says gently.

“It’s my fault, I should have told you how he gets – what happened-“ Sam chokes on the words. John doesn’t have anything he can say, he just kneels in front of his boy, wraps his arms around the young man, relieved when he feels the shaking shoulders as the sobbing resumes. It’s longer than John likes before the boy’s breathing eases, and there’s a soft snuffle before the whisper.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Don’t be sorry, Sammy. I thought we trained that crap out of your brother a few years ago. I’ll set him straight, you can help me.”

“Me?” Reddened eyes peer at him.

“You’re the one with a solid head on your shoulders. I’ll take your assist any day, make a good Lance Corporal,” he says gruffly, and Sam looks surprised. It’s a compliment usually reserved for Dean. “Your brother’s being demoted for a time. You up to hunting with just you and me?”

“Are you serious?”

“Until he learns the lesson, I am. You’ll do it? Good. We’re gonna take a little downtime for training, I think, but there’s a job up in Canada I’ve got to do first, and I need some help.”

Sam’s quiet, determined. “I can do it.”

John ruffles his boy’s hair. “I know you can.” He pours water from the bottle in his jacket pocket onto his handkerchief, wipes the traces of tears away from his son’s face. The kid blushes, drawing a chuckle from John.

“What are you gonna…” Sam trails off, and John knows what he’s asking.

“I’m gonna wait until morning to beat his ass for him, so he can think about it while we’re riding. He’s got to learn somehow.”

Sam nods, follows his father back to the car, listens to a very quiet Dean report on where they’re going. It’s not going to be easy, but somehow Dean needs to learn the lesson that Sam understands and John’s always seemed to know without effort – that there’s no glory in danger.

**Author's Note:**

> Music:Ben Harper - Burn One Down


End file.
